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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

St. Nicholas Day preparations

Tonight is the night when your children may exhibiting extra-good behavior combined with a sudden rare desire to locate both of their shoes, for tonight is the Eve of St. Nicholas. We found that once you surprise your children with candy in their shoes for the first time, the yearly ritual quickly establishes itself. So, if your family celebrates St. Nicholas day, you as a parent will probably be readying some shoe-sized treats for stealthy delivery late tonight.

My typical tradition is to give books, usually from the annual library sale. Here is a picture of last year's toddler shoes. I was lucky with my candy finds: the church bazaar sold candy canes decorated with marshmallow Christmas figures and chocolate cake-lollipops. Also in the shoes was a frosted gingerbread cookie and a jingle-bell bracelet, respectively made by my two oldest girls.

This year I'm packing the shoes with discounted lunchboxes from a fall school sale. I just hope I have enough gingerbread cookies!

3 comments:

Our eldest is named Nicholas,after the patron Saint of children. Now, as Nick approaches age 18, I still look in on him at as he sleeps and ponder how quickly his childhood has flown by. He shares a room with his brother who is 12. We named him Coleman, which is a family name. When I looked it up in a book once I smiled when I found that Colman means "follower of Nicholas". HAPPY ST. NICKS DAY EVERYONE!!

... once you surprise your children with candy in their shoes for the first time, the yearly ritual quickly establishes itself.

How true! Puggle is three and a half... as soon as there was any mention of the approach of Christmas/Advent, he suddenly started talking about putting his shoes by the fireplace and Saint Nicholas coming to put chocolate coins in them! It happened for the first time last year, and aside from occasional mentions for the rest of December, it hadn't been mentioned since...

Purpose

How can you be an artist when you're a busy mom or dad who doesn't have much time to write novels or paint pictures or compose sonatas? This is the dilemma for the beauty-lover who wants to help build a culture of life but just doesn't have time.

What can be done is to try to make our homes our art, for our families.

Please don't imagine that perfection lies outside the margins of these photographs. When I share images and thoughts, it's not to erect an ideal standard, but to share what inspires me.

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